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I was asked to give my opinion as to why I don't think it's Garth. Fine.

I don't think it's Garth for the same reason why I don't think it's Gary Mitchell, Roger Corby, Ron Tracey, Harry Mudd, or any other TOS baddie that you can come up with. The target viewing audience simply would not care about this. It's purpose would only be to satisfy trufan fanwankery, and that's not necessary anymore.

I've heard the rumors too that BC is supposed to be a TOS character. I personally think that's bullshit (or at the least, he'll be a TOS character in name only). The Dark Knight Rises is a perfect example of this. While Bane was a good villain in that movie, he was completely, completely different than the Bane from the comic. But Bane was chosen for a reason: he broke Batman's back in the comic, and he broke Batman's back in the film.

Except in this point in time in the AltVerse, Khan doesn't yet want "bloodthirsty revenge" on Kirk. And it doesn't even seem like the villain wants revenge on Kirk individually but on Earth and the Federation/Starfleet as a whole.

And the audience could easily care about Garth as a villain as long as the writers and Cumberbatch do their jobs and make them care. You don't need to have prior knowledge of the villain to think he's bad news for the good guy. In that case, every Bond movie would suck because there's a new bad guy that nobody knows about in every film, and any movie with an original villain would fail as well.

To me, Garth has the best background to have his motivation easily explained in the narrative of the movie without having to do a heavy handed exposition. The audience won't have had to see a single episode of TOS to get that he is who he is, and why.

And I could see Abrams laughing his ass off that the primary fan theories are not about that character. Alice Eve's hairdo and the hand scene in the Japanese trailer were deliberate misdirection just to make it even funnier.

But after the teaser came out and there's this mention of family, I'm going out on a limb and calling it for Kirk's brother, George Samuel Kirk.

Nah, too hard to explain the accent.

Sooo...Garth or Mitchell, Mitchell or Garth. Getting kinda hard to choose. It would be very easy to just take one name and make him an amalgam of both characters. And Garth sounds a bit more threatening than Gary, I suppose, or at least less suburban.

The need to have Khan look like a genetically engineered superman is a big reason why it won't be Khan, not played by some scrawny, fugly guy with an accent that doesn't belong with a guy named Khan.

Montelban was physically right for the role because he looked extreme - very handsome, very built, very exotic accent (in a time when the audience wouldn't be expected to know the difference between an Indian and Mexican accent).

That conveyed the idea that the character was a physical manifestation of perfection, before a line of dialogue was spoken. So when he revealed his backstory, the audience was primed to understand and believe it, because he looked it. (The exoticism was to throw in some sex and danger.)

TV and movies are a visual medium, and particularly in this era of global audiences who might be reading the dialogue from subtitles, and not necessarily following very closely or even being very literate, it's vital that anything important be conveyed visually, so that it supports the dialogue and plot. If the visuals are clashing with the plot, the audience will get lost.

Cumberbatch does not visually communicate the idea of a genetically engineered superman. But he sure does communicate the idea of a supercilious egomaniac who may be off his rocker. If the character were Mitchell, I'd expect more of a fresh, youthful, all-American type, an evil version of Pine's Kirk.

Yep, and he has a perfect motivation for being vengeful without coming off as a copy of the previous film. He was a hero, and from no fault of his own he was injured, healed by the Antosians and as a result gained powers but lost his mind. So we kind of feel for the guy since it isn't his fault, and Starfleet just wrote him off as a nut and committed him to Elba II. Totally gives us the grey area between good and evil that was talked about while still allowing him to be pretty badass.

To me, it seems the perfect choice...why take a character that was already shown to be a credible villain and try to recapture that? Why not instead take a character that was a major missed opportunity and finally give him the story line he deserved?

The need to have Khan look like a genetically engineered superman is a big reason why it won't be Khan, not played by some scrawny, fugly guy with an accent that doesn't belong with a guy named Khan.

Maybe Khan is unfrozen by Klingons, taught to shapeshift by Antosians, taught mind control by Talosians and then impersonates Kirk's friend, Gary Mitchell. Only Kirk knows he's a phony 'cos the real Gary died when he once crossed the intergalactic barrier?

Actually, I'm thinking that with Pike returning in this movie, there may well be a Talosian reference somewhere.

To me, it seems the perfect choice...why take a character that was already shown to be a credible villain and try to recapture that? Why not instead take a character that was a major missed opportunity and finally give him the story line he deserved?

This sums up my exact feelings about why it isn't Khan, and if it is, it shouldn't be.

The only reason Khan is so "iconic" is that he got to be in a movie, and because he was played by someone who became a very well known actor.

Picking a different TOS character for this role (and for matter, what if it's someone who was a neutral or even good guy?) seems more like a writing choice the writers would make.
There's just more of an open playground using a different character.

Cumberbatch as Garth would be every bit as iconic as Khan was.

The only way I really see this story having anything to do with Khan is if they go in a totally different direction from "Wrath of Khan" or even "Space Seed" - for example, Khan has something to do with the story, but Cumby ISN'T HIM. In that case, I really can see Abrams et al being as tight-lipped as they are.

That said, Star Trek has wasted perfectly good villains/actors before. Soran could have been SO much better - it's Malcolm freaking McDowell. His parts were pretty good. The rest of the film was pretty bad.

I'm hoping that the story is more complex than just a bad guy story. I am really missing stories like ST IV and ST VI.